The other day Andy and I were waiting in a parking lot to meet up with a group and take them across the border to our campground. We were sitting in a truck with the Amor Ministries logo on the side when a man came up to the truck and knocked on the window. He said to us, “You don’t know me, but 10 years ago you (Amor) changed my life when you built my church.”

It was incredible to be able to see an example of the long term effects of the ministry.  My hope is that all of Amor’s participants, volunteers, supporters and team members understand they are the “you” of whom this man was speaking.

Our Ministry Planning Board Members in Mexico shared their hearts with us. Please pray for them.

Jose Hernandez

Praise – We have had a difficult time with family issues but the Lord has moved us forward and His glory and power has manifested itself and He has given us victory in everything. All has worked for good.

Prayer – Pray for six members of the church who don’t have work. We would like to build a new church building but we are having difficulty getting what we need from the city. Please pray for this request.

Gustavo Rendon

Praise – Thank you very much for your prayers, they give strength and support and God has done His work. We have passed some crises, for the moment, the Red Sea is passed and we enter Jordan.

Prayer – From August 16-22 we will have a mission trip to Santa Rosalia, B.C. Sur. Prayer for our travel and that the backpacks with school supplies we will be taking will make a difference.

Florentino Gallardo

Praise – Thank you for your prayers. The Lord Jesus Christ has helped us with what we need for the function of the church. Thank you for your prayers for my family and for blessing my life.

Prayer – Please pray that God would help us start small groups that will grow families and that God would give me a wife.

Cesar Nunez

Praise – Thank you for your prayers and support that have been a great blessing and that God has answered the prayers the we gave long ago. Thank you for your support in everything. God bless you.

Prayer – I ask you to be praying for this ministry to be able to find lost souls for Christ. Thank you very much and God bless you.

Hortencio Guerrero

Praise – I give thanks because my wife was hospitalized but she is already recuperating in our house. I give thanks to God for his prayers and mercy. Glory to God.

Prayer – I ask for your prayers for the quick recovery of my wife and also for my children and my life and my ministry. Thank you for your prayers.

Ezequiel Higuera

Praise – Thank you for your prayers because God has blessed us in spiritual things.

Prayer – Please pray for me, I have a sickness. God knows when it will leave me and I know that God listens.

Mere Don

Praise – Your prayers have been very important. We have notably received help from God in various requests that have been manifested.

Prayer – Please prayer for the company Elohim that we would be lifted to support the work of the Lord. This commercial company’s food and finances are for the ministry of the Lord.

Oscar Higuera

Praise – Thank you for all the blessings that God has spilled in an equal manner to know His love. To Lydia that God would bless her and all that she does. God is with you.

Prayer – I ask for your prayers for the church that God would continue blessing and for each vision and project that is at work in the church.

Eusebio Haros

Praise – I give thanks to God for the time that I have been able to serve with Amor. Thanks to God for the time that Lydia has been with us; it has been a great blessing.

Prayer – In the presence of God, we have need of a vehicle to move the church and the families.

Adolfo Escamilla

Praise – Thank you for the salvation of my family, my salvation, for the hearing team, for my children’s school.

Prayer – Pray for transportation for my church, for the economy and the church, for some land in San Quintin for a church.

Armando Ponce

Praise – Thanks that God has supplied all our necessities for the church and us personally.

Prayer – Pray that we would have the help of God for our VBS that we would have the highest number of children possible for Christ. Please help us pray for this work.

Fausto Meraz

Praise – Thanks to God for His unspeakable gift, that He is good, and always for His mercy.

Prayer – Pray for pastors Fausto and Maria and for the church. We need a bus.

Juan Briceno

Praise – Pray for the church family. God has blessed us in everything.

Prayer – Pray for the family, church, and ministry of the prison, for a car for the family. Thank you.

Jesus Lobatos De Avila

Praise – Thankyou for your prayers. My family is very well and so is the church and ministry.

Prayer – Pray for my family, the marriages of church leaders, and a vehicle to transport people.

Jose Luis

Praise – Thanks for the health of my mother. I give thanks for your prayers.

Prayer – I ask for prayers for four brothers in my church who are sick: Brother Agustin, Brother Noemy, Sister Angelica, and Brother Isandro.

Romelio Perez

Praise – My wife, Mari, had an operation on her nose and she healed very well from her surgery. My mother will have a hernia surgery next month.

Prayer – Pray for health for my mother that she would live in Him. I need Bibles with large print hard backs. Thank you.

A big thanks to all who took part in the June X Project! In one day we were able to provide a new home for the Morales family because of your participation.

Standing the walls as members of the family watch.

Adam hanging with the kids.

Squaring the roof and adding tar paper as a vapor barrier.

A little help with the painting!

House nearing completion on a beautiful afternoon in Baja.

The X Project Team

Elisa and Rosy try out the keys to their new house for the first time.

What can you do to change someone’s life?  Can you give a day? Three days? A week? for more info on how you can participate in an Amor X Project, please visit our website or contact missionservices@amor.org .

To see more X Project photos, check out our Flickr page.

A great message from our good friend from Urban Saints, Matt Summerfield.

Some of the Pastors on Amor’s Mexico Ministry Planning Board recently took a trip to Mexicali to assess the needs of the earthquake victims. While there, they also distributed several water filters. Here are some photos from their trip.

Below is a follow up post to Gayla’s article, Be Angry, But Do Not Sin. To read the original article click here.

1. There are 100 million street children – 60 million living in Latin America. What is the church doing?

2. 1.2 million children are victims of sex trafficking.  I hear more celebrities talking about what they are doing than I do the church. Jesus’ ministry had an intentional focus on children and he showed they often understood him better than adults.

3. Statistics show Christians have the resources to eradicate poverty worldwide. So what part of the Bible are we not reading? Jesus talks about the poor over and over and over. Read Matthew 25 over and over and over.

4.  Racism, sexim an elitism continue to exist. In the church. Let’s remember that Jesus directed his admonishments to the those that considered themselves the religious leaders at that time. He would be addressing those same issues with church today.

5. The drug war in Mexico is fueled by so many things;  including the U.S. consumption of  drugs and a total disregard for human life by the cartels.

6. Some American Christians have adhered to an isolationist theology forgetting that God doesn’t see borders. Where in the Bible does it say we can sort by self? I get really angry when I’m told that ‘we need to help our own’. What does that mean anyway? (please reread the ‘Love thy neighbor’ passage)

7. Every Sunday we sings songs of worship saying things like, “I will follow him wherever he leads me.” Will we? It makes me angry that we talk out of both sides of our mouths.

8. Someone actually told me that our homes are a ‘standard house building kit’ that we can push off onto another group if they canceled. After 30 years if that is how we are perceived, then I’m in the wrong ministry.

9. Instead of trusting God, we are living in a paralyzing fear that is affecting our ability to serve God and follow Him wherever He leads.

10. We are spiritual pigs asking what the church can do for us instead of what can we do for the church.

11. We are selective in who we choose to love. Thank goodness Jesus doesn’t do that. “And they will know we are Christians by our love, by our love, and they will know we are Christians by our love.”

“In your anger do not sin; do not let the sun go down while you are still angry.”

Ephesians 4:26 (NIV)

Scott and I recently had a guest from England stay with us after his group returned home from their Amor Mission Trip.  We wanted him to have a true Southern California cross-cultural experience so, we took him to Disneyland!  Taking an adult from another country on their first Disneyland experience was more fun than I could have imagined.  We bought him a ridiculous hat with mouse ears, put his name on it, took a picture of him wearing it, then promptly put it up on Facebook!

As much as I love the rides, my favorite part is the opportunity to people watch and listen.  Despite being the so-called “happiest place on earth,” one can often hear conversations that aren’t so happy.  For example, I nearly always hear a mom or dad sternly instructing a child with “We will have fun here today.  I mean it.  You are going to have fun!”

As this particular day was winding down, our group was walking to another ride when I overheard a very loud conversation.  An angry woman was yelling so loudly that I had to turn to get a glimpse of the beneficiary of such a verbal beating.

Her anger, directed at presumably her husband, seemed to stem from something trivial.  She had purchased a bottle of soda and had entrusted him to carry it.  Unfortunately, he made the mistake of opening it—which she repeated over and over again, she hadn’t given him permission to do.  She was furious because her plan to drink it at 10 p.m. was now ruined because all the carbonation had been let out at 9 p.m..

Anger manifests itself in many ways.  It can be represented by vile language, a vulgar gesture, or even a gun shot.  The woman at Disneyland reminded me that we spend needless emotional energy being angry about things that simply don’t really matter.

In The Message, Paul’s verse on anger is translated this way, “Go ahead and be angry.  You do well to be angry but don’t use your anger for fuel for revenge.  And don’t stay angry.  Don’t go to bed angry.”

I like this.  He goes on to say that there are things that should make us angry—like the exploitation taking place at the temple that caused Jesus to turn over the tables of the money changers.  Likewise, Moses was often really ticked off at the children of Israel because of their sin.

Lately, I pondered this issue of anger.  If Jesus were here today, would he be angry about the same things that set us off?  I seriously doubt he would be upset about the loss of carbonation in a coke bottle.  And, I just can’t see him driving with road rage.  What would make him angry?

I think the same things that made him angry when he walked the earth would probably make him angry today.  Conversely, I doubt that the politics of our day would move him to anger.

Rather, I agree with what Philip Yancy’s says in his book, The Jesus I Never Knew.  “If the gates of hell cannot prevail against the church, then I hardly believe the political contemporary scene is much of a threat.”  Likewise, I am reminded of what Dr. Jack Hayford said to his congregation after an election years ago: that God is sovereign and throughout history has had His way.  So, why do the temporary things of this world cause so much anger?  Let us remember that there is only one kingdom that matters.

Jesus made it very clear to the rich young ruler that he needed to sell everything he had and give the money to the poor in order to follow him.  What makes us think that we get a free pass on this?  Isn’t his promise of eternal life good enough?  Another consideration: To get what we want, people are often exploited.  How do we reconcile this when we are called to love our neighbors?

People are angry at each other.  Christians are yelling at one another and the world is watching and listening just like I did at Disneyland.  The issues have gotten so heated that prominent Christians in the United States signed a covenant of civility—committing to engage in thoughtful and kind discussions on subjects which they disagree.

I just read a story about Leonardo da Vinci that speaks to the true spirit of this.  As da Vinci was painting The Last Supper, he became angry with someone for impeding his progress and lashed out at that person.  After that incident, he went back to his painting. When he reached the point of painting the face of Jesus, he found that he could not continue without first making things right with the individual who caused his anger.  Regardless of our emotional makeup, anger affects all of us.  When we allow anger to control us, we feel poorly, knowing that we must make things right.

May we look to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith and be angry about what makes him angry.  So, be angry but do not sin.

If you would like to see a list of things that make Gayla angry, click here.

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.”

- Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

My oldest son, Will, is almost six years old and he loves planting seeds. He thought the exercise they did at school where they planted the small seeds in the little cup was very cool. He’s carried that over into planting seeds in our back yard.

I’m not quite sure what age it is when we begin to forget about the seeds and become focused primarily on what is blooming above the surface. But over time, in our fast-food culture and instantaneous world of communication, it’s almost hard to imagine anything taking “that much time.”

So, in the “get things done” spaces in our lives, our longer-term vision gets blurred by the demand for instant results. We often find ourselves racing from place to place, meeting to meeting, deal to deal – seeking instant closure and gratification. We become impatient and look for the quick-fix solutions in our relationships, our careers, and our pursuits. We somehow get tricked into thinking we can bypass the growing process and jump right to the harvest.

However, what if we could ‘Step Back’, slow ourselves down today, and turn our attention from the harvest back to the seeds? What if we could focus intentionally on planting positive seeds in our relationships, our families, and our work? What if we could plant seeds and then shift our attention to nurturing and cultivating those particular seeds?

I’m not nearly the planter Will is, but I can’t help but think that purposeful approach may improve the overall quality of our harvest in the long run. So, what seeds will I choose to plant today along my path? What seeds will you plant along yours?

“I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit – fruit that will last.”

- John 15:16

Travel Gracefully.

Jason Barger, 11-Time Amor leader and creator of the “Step Back from the Baggage Claim” Movement

I received this quote from an organization that sends out short, daily devotionals. It speaks to what Amor tries to accomplish through partnership with the Church.

“Family values and social justice aren’t separate issues. The health of the community depends on the health of the family and the health of the family depends on the justice of the community.”
- John Perkins, from Welcoming Justice, co-written with Charles Marsh

What do you think?